View Source Deployment

Head to the Deploy section of our docs site to get started.

See below for technical considerations and instructions.

Encryption

Lightning enforces encryption at rest for credentials, TOTP backup codes, and webhook trigger authentication methods, for which an encryption key must be provided when running in production.

The key is expected to be a randomized set of bytes, 32 long; and Base64 encoded when setting the environment variable.

There is a mix task that can generate keys in the correct shape for use as an environment variable:

mix lightning.gen_encryption_key
0bJ9w+hn4ebQrsCaWXuA9JY49fP9kbHmywGd5K7k+/s=

Copy your key (NOT THIS ONE) and set it as PRIMARY_ENCRYPTION_KEY in your environment.

Workers

Lightning uses external worker processes for executing Runs. There are three settings required to configure worker authentication.

WORKER_RUNS_PRIVATE_KEY
WORKER_LIGHTNING_PUBLIC_KEY
WORKER_SECRET

You can use the mix lightning.gen_worker_keys task to generate these for convenience.

For more information see the Workers documentation.

Environment Variables

Note that for secure deployments, it's recommended to use a combination of secrets and configMaps to generate secure environment variables.

Limits

WORKER_MAX_RUN_MEMORY_MB - how much memory (in MB) can a single run use?
RUN_GRACE_PERIOD_SECONDS - how long after the MAX_RUN_DURATION_SECONDS should the server wait for the worker to send back data on a run.
WORKER_MAX_RUN_DURATION_SECONDS - the maximum duration (in seconds) that workflows are allowed to run (keep this plus RUN_GRACE_PERIOD_SECONDS below your termination_grace_period if using kubernetes)
WORKER_CAPACITY - the number of runs a ws-worker instance will take on concurrently.
MAX_DATACLIP_SIZE_MB - the maximum size (in MB) of a dataclip created via the webhook trigger URL for a job. This limits the max request size via the JSON plug and may (in future) limit the size of dataclips that can be stored as run_results via the websocket connection from a worker.

Github

Lightning enables connection to github via Github Apps. The following github permissions are needed for the github app:

Resource	Access
Actions	Read and Write
Contents	Read and Write
Metadata	Read only
Secrets	Read and Write
Workflows	Read and Write

Ensure you set the following URLs:

Homepage URL: <app_url_here>
Callback URL for authorizing users: <app_url_here>/oauth/github/callback (Do NOT check the two checkboxes in this section requesting Device Flow and OAuth.)
Setup URL for Post installation: <app_url_here>/setup_vcs (Check the box for Redirect on update)

These envrionment variables will need to be set in order to configure the github app:

Variable	Description
`GITHUB_APP_ID`	the github app ID.
`GITHUB_APP_NAME`	the github app name
`GITHUB_APP_CLIENT_ID`	the github app Client ID
`GITHUB_APP_CLIENT_SECRET`	the github app Client Secret
`GITHUB_CERT`	the github app private key

You can access these from your github app settings menu. Also needed for the configurtaion is:

REPO_CONNECTION_SIGNING_SECRET - secret used to sign access tokens. This access token is used to authenticate requests made from the github actions. You can generate this using mix lightning.gen_encryption_key

Storage

Lightning can use a storage backend to store exports.

Variable	Description
`STORAGE_BACKEND`	the storage backend to use. (default is `local`)
`STORAGE_PATH`	the path to store files in. (default is `.`)

Supported backends:

local - local file storage
gcs - Google Cloud Storage

Google Cloud Storage

For Google Cloud Storage, the following environment variables are required:

Variable	Description
`GCS_BUCKET`	the name of the bucket to store files in
`GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS_JSON`	A base64 encoded JSON keyfile for the service account with access to the bucket.

ℹ️ Note: The GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS_JSON should be base64 encoded, currently Workload Identity is not supported.

Other config

Variable	Description
`ADAPTORS_PATH`	Where you store your locally installed adaptors
`ALLOW_SIGNUP`	Set to `true` to enable user access to the registration page. Set to `false` to disable new user registrations and block access to the registration page.<br>Default is `true`.
`CORS_ORIGIN`	A list of acceptable hosts for browser/cors requests (',' separated)
`DISABLE_DB_SSL`	In production, the use of an SSL connection to Postgres is required by default.<br>Setting this to `"true"` allows unencrypted connections to the database. This is strongly discouraged in a real production environment.
`EMAIL_ADMIN`	This is used as the sender email address for system emails. It is also displayed in the menu as the support email.
`EMAIL_SENDER_NAME`	This is displayed in the email client as the sender name for emails sent by the application.
`IDLE_TIMEOUT`	The number of seconds that must pass without data being received before the Lightning web server kills the connection.
`IS_RESETTABLE_DEMO`	If set to `yes`, it allows this instance to be reset to the initial "Lightning Demo" state. Note that this will destroy most of what you have in your database!
`K8S_HEADLESS_SERVICE`	This environment variable is automatically set if you're running on GKE and it is used to establish an Erlang node cluster. Note that if you're not using Kubernetes, the "gossip" strategy is used to establish clusters.
`LISTEN_ADDRESS`	The address the web server should bind to. Defaults to `127.0.0.1` to block access from other machines.
`LOG_LEVEL`	How noisy you want the logs to be (e.g., `debug`, `info`)
`MIX_ENV`	Your mix env, likely `prod` for deployment
`NODE_ENV`	Node env, likely `production` for deployment
`ORIGINS`	The allowed origins for web traffic to the backend
`PORT`	The port your Phoenix app runs on
`PRIMARY_ENCRYPTION_KEY`	A base64 encoded 32 character long string.<br>See Encryption.
`QUEUE_RESULT_RETENTION_PERIOD_SECONDS`	The number of seconds to keep completed (successful) `ObanJobs` in the queue (not to be confused with runs and/or history)
`SCHEMAS_PATH`	Path to the credential schemas that provide forms for different adaptors
`SECRET_KEY_BASE`	A secret key used as a base to generate secrets for encrypting and signing data.
`SENTRY_DSN`	If using Sentry for error monitoring, your DSN
`URL_HOST`	The host used for writing URLs (e.g., `demo.openfn.org`)
`URL_PORT`	The port, usually `443` for production
`URL_SCHEME`	The scheme for writing URLs (e.g., `https`)
`USAGE_TRACKER_HOST`	The host that receives usage tracking submissions<br>(defaults to https://impact.openfn.org)
`USAGE_TRACKING_DAILY_BATCH_SIZE`	The number of days that will be reported on with each run of `UsageTracking.DayWorker`. This will only have a noticeable effect in cases where there is a backlog or where reports are being generated retroactively (defaults to 10).
`USAGE_TRACKING_ENABLED`	Enables the submission of anonymized usage data to OpenFn (defaults to `true`)
`USAGE_TRACKING_RESUBMISSION_BATCH_SIZE`	The number of failed reports that will be submitted on each resubmission run (defaults to 10)
`USAGE_TRACKING_UUIDS`	Indicates whether submissions should include cleartext UUIDs or not. Options are `cleartext` or `hashed_only`, with the default being `hashed_only`.

AI Chat

🧪 Experimental

Lightning can be configured to use an AI chatbot for user interactions.

See openfn/apollo for more information on the Apollo AI service.

The following environment variables are required:

OPENAI_API_KEY - your OpenAI API key.
APOLLO_ENDPOINT - the endpoint for the OpenFn Apollo AI service.

Kafka Triggers

🧪 Experimental

Lightning workflows can be configured with a trigger that will consume messages from a Kafka Cluster. By default this is disabled and you will not see the option to create a Kafka trigger in the UI, nor will the Kafka consumer groups be running.

To enable this feature set the KAFKA_TRIGGERS_ENABLED environment variable to yes and restart Lightning. Please note that, if you enable this feature and then create some Kafka triggers and then disable the feature, you will not be able to edit any triggers created before the feature was disabled.

Performance Tuning

The number of Kafka consumers in the consumer group can be modified by setting the KAFKA_NUMBER_OF_CONSUMERS environment variable. The default value is currently 1. The optimal setting is one consumer per topic partition. NOTE: This setting will move to KafkaConfiguration as it will be trigger-specific.

The number of messages that the Kafka consumer will forward is rate-limited by the KAFKA_NUMBER_OF_MESSAGES_PER_SECOND environment variable. This can be set to a value of less than 1 (minimum 0.1) and will converted (and rounded-down) to an integer value of messages over a 10-second interval (e.g. 0.15 becomes 1 message every 10 seconds). The default value is 1.

Processing concurrency within the Kafka Broadway pipeline is controlled by the KAFKA_NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS environment variable. Modifying this, modifies the number of processors that are downstream of the Kafka consumer, so an increase in this value should increase throughput (when factoring in the rate limit set by KAFKA_NUMBER_OF_MESSAGES_PER_SECOND). The default value is 1.

Deduplication

Each Kafka trigger maintains record of the topic, parition and offset for each message received. This to protect against the ingestion of duplicate messages from the cluster. These records are periodically cleaned out. The duration for which they are retained is controlled by KAFKA_DUPLICATE_TRACKING_RETENTION_SECONDS. The default value is 3600.

Disabling Kafka Triggers

After a Kafka consumer group connects to a Kafka cluster, the cluster will track the last committed offset for a given consumer group ,to ensure that the consumer group receives the correct messages.

This data is retained for a finite period. If an enabled Kafka trigger is disabled for longer than the offset retention period the consumer group offset data will be cleared.

If the Kafka trigger is re-enabled after the offset data has been cleared, this will result in the consumer group reverting to what has been configured as the 'Initial offset reset policy' for the trigger. This may result in the duplication of messages or even data loss.

It is recommended that you check the value of the offsets.retention.minutes for the Kafka cluster to determine what the cluster's retention period is, and consider this when disabling a Kafka trigger for an extended period.

Google Oauth2

Using your Google Cloud account, provision a new OAuth 2.0 Client with the 'Web application' type.

Set the callback url to: https://<ENDPOINT DOMAIN>/authenticate/callback. Replacing ENDPOINT DOMAIN with the host name of your instance.

Once the client has been created, get/download the OAuth client JSON and set the following environment variables:

Variable	Description
`GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID`	Which is `client_id` from the client details.
`GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET`	`client_secret` from the client details.

Salesforce Oauth2

Using your Salesforce developer account, create a new Oauth 2.0 connected application.